Electrical and thermal conductivity of soft solder at low temperatures

The electrical resistivity of soft solder (Pb_0.28Sn_0.72) has been measured in the temperature range 4.2 K to 300 K. The ‘alloy’ becomes electrically superconducting at a temperature of 6.9 K. Above this, in the entire temperature range, the resistivity could be described, apart from the residual resistivity, by the weighted average of the resistivities of the individual constituents which are derived from the Bloch-Grüneisen relation. The results are in accordance with the phase diagram, which shows a co-existence of two phases in almost the entire range of concentration of the Pb-Sn binary system. It has been shown that the thermal conductivity data on soft solder as well as on Pb_0.7Sn_0.3, both taken from literature, could be interpreted on the same basis, below and above the ‘superconducting transition temperature’. Recent results on other Pb-Sn systems are discussed in the light of this interpretation.